Bowazon why vitality and strafe?

been checking lots of guides for bowazon, suddenly, everyone is maxing out strafe and multi-shot and vitality.

I remember that dexterity was important back in the day, 1 dex = 1% damage … right? Or what is changed for D2R?
What good is amazon with 130 dex and 500 vitality?

Whats up with the multishot and strafe?
I never liked strafe and i dont see any connection between the skills …
like fire arrow gives extra damage to explosive arrow etc …
Almost every guides says multishot, guided arrow and strafe is a must … i dont see a single reason why I need to max out all 3 skills since they are not connected, no one explains why.

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I think a lot of the ‘new’ guides are made by people tasked with the job of make it guides to use as content on some sites and are not made my ‘experts’ in the class. They use a formula and don’t address the specifics that are unique to the class.

I’m far better with necy’s and each time I see a necy guide with the best in slot gear showing hoto and spirit, I know they don’t really play necy. Maxroll’s necy building guide even recomends building a bone necy then switching to summoner. This is totally backwards as a summoner can max skellys and have other important skills by lvl 23. This is by far the easier route…

I saw a guide that had you max multi shot…with +8 to skills. All those extra pts in multi really helped.

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Just read this and don’t take it for granted.
The information here is actually accurate.

Bowazon PvM & PvP Guide - Updated - Amazon - Diablo 2 Resurrected Forums (blizzard.com)

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Base Vit, every spare point in Dex (= sex). Use Valk and Decoy as decoys. Engage in homicide.

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Dont listen to noobs.

Enough str for gear, rest into dex (maybe a tiny bit vit)

get multi shot high enough for 24 arrows
max guided arrow
max crit strike

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I like to have around 100 vit (incl. gear), str for gear and rest goes into dex for dmg.
Bowazon already struggles with dmg, so you cannot pass on that.

strafe is complete garbanzo, so i have no idea why anyone would ever play that. Also it looks garbage

Brief and very simple answers. I have a different perspective.

If you follow TSBoyer and Razor- which is the buzz line of Mulit/Guided with Critical strike you must pay attention to break points for FPA. Mulitshot is a fast fire skill to cover everything in front and some behind off screen. Leech is poor, you don’t get full effects of knockback or any other bonus damage modifier- crushing blow and others. It relies on the hit animation to stagger … a bit where 4 more shots of ### arrows do the job. It works great until about /p 5, fire MS slow = dead bowa. Not an issue in /p1 where most players showcase their YT chaos runs. This is why TSBoyer “budget build” relies on jewels with IAS. If this type of play style looks appealing pump vitality…?100+ or eventually less as you accumulate charms, Fortitude. You will need the extra vitality.

Strafe delivers everything- knockback and all the other modifiers and piercing arrows carry the bonuses as well. The bonuses are less important except Knockback- this and strafe make /p5 much easier. You hear the …strafe lock utters? Those are the players whom never learned to use the decoy to control the killing field. Strafe is much more forgiving with IAS break points. It works great the faster it is but it does not need it like MS.

Using the combination covers everything.

Guided arrows are the boss killers- bows don’t do bosses as easy as other classes, the bowa gets there and then runs around guided arrow until dead. Don’t strafe bosses, and it is a good way to showcase how bad strafe can be. Again /p1 a few GA’s with the any of the elite bows and it’s time for a new game. But GA needs to be 20 to be effective and the more the better.

I am not much of a MS player but can see the attraction with the YT /p1.

Raising Multi Arrow does’t increase damage, it just adds more arrows. A mob only gets hit by 1 arrow, even if there are 5 mobs and you shoot 24 arrows. Only if an arrow pierce, can it go through a mob and hit another. This is related to pierce skill, and it doesn’t matter if you shoot 10 arrows or 24.

There is absolutely no reason to shoot more than 10-12 Multi Arrows.

I didnt say it did?

24 arrows and max breakpoint is needed though

People advice MS/GA because it is optimal build not “buzz”. Dont take me wrong if you like Strafe by all means play it, but MS is simply better. Strafe takes what 36 frames for full cycle? Thats 5 MS at 7 fpa. 10 Arrows vs 120. When it comes to procing thats 10 v 10. With MS you control spread and where you shot, with strafe you only control first arrow eg:
Player: “bloody Dolls”
Strafe: “uuu Cadaver on the other side of the map”
Also Strafe locks you in place - thats a fact - and despite Decoy, Valk, Merc, you are nearly bound to die because of it at some point.
Because you dont do as much damage and are lock in place you have to sacrifice some damage to survivability.
Whatever you run as a strafer MS bowa will be more efficient by just running CS and cows.
At the end we come to GA - yes both use it for bosses, but MS bowa shoots them at 7 fpa Strafer will shoot at 10 - thats nearly 3 arrows vs 2.
Now, I am not saying strafer is unplayable (I did play quite few myself) its just that MS is better. The best thing strafer has going, is that it is way cheaper than MS.

Brand.

You run CS and cows 24>12

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And there it is. The Javazon does cows and the MS zon does cows AND CS.

Maybe rename as the Guide-a-Zon catchy ya?

Javazon does everything and is considerably more durable and much higher DPS for less gear. But MS/Strafe Bowazons are much more fun to play :wink:

The problem with most bowazon builds is that their damage does not scale well as mob and player numbers increase. I ran a strafe-zon build called a “procazon” many years ago that emphasized strafe with WF + Atma’s Scarab to rip through everything, While it worked great for CS and WSK, it lacked survivability to tank any real burst damage.

Strafe lock sux, but strafe is viable vs. single boss targets due to its inherent ammo conservation, while MS is strictly anti-crowd. Strafe could be fixed by letting players terminate strafe manually and adding damage synergies, but Blizzard seems dead-set on killing strafe given its present status.

That post didn’t age well

I didn’t expect this post to get necro’d haha :slight_smile:

My previous post was intended to alert Blizz as to just how terrible strafe was. I’m glad the effort paid off – the missing synergies were added, and the 25% damage nerf removed. It only took them… 2 decades to figure this out?

I just loaded D2R on my brand new i9-12900k PC, but in all honesty, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands makes it difficult to resume D2R game play.

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If my memory serve me right, old day common advise is :-

“Enough Str/Dex for gearing and the rest to Vit EXCEPT Glass Cannon Amazon”

And many Ama Players advise :-

“50 or 100 Vit depend on your skill”

D2R change Strafe back to 100% Weapon Damage and add Synergy almost MS, GA & Strafe :-

MS buff GA & Strafe
GA buff MS & Strafe

my main is a hybrid bowazon, so It’s not exactly the same, but I’m enjoying strafe allot now. I liked it back before the buffs, but now it’s very easy to clear out anything with strafe. Then I have FA for phys immunes and tight pack clears.

But on my full phys amazon, I’m using both MA and strafe. Strafe for general use and MA for faster large pack clears, like the minion groups.

And yeah, I never feel any concern about vitality. I like to have 1k health in Hell, but after that I pump Dex. I think the whole “gear req rest in vitality” is just a default standard for people who have to pump out guides for their paycheck.

I play glass canon dext bowa in hc, since years and years. Positioning and anticipation is required but it works for me as I didn’t die the last 5 years, so, obviously in d2r s1 either.
I don’t play with cta as I don’t feel the need, I just have sanctuary shield + titans on switch for the stairs.
I rarely get fans puppets in worldstone chamber immediately after the stairs but in hc you have to prevent this as one time is enough to end your beloved toon, it saved me once this ladder, and I took the stairs up back :grin:, thanks the 75% block (switch to walk before stairs of c ) I survived despite life under 1k hp total, still alive and kicking till now, This beloved dextabowa already found several hr’s.

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400 dex isnt as much damage as you think it is. Even on a godly geared zon it’s only pushing 2k-3k more damage on things like strafe. While vita has a lot more survivability.

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I don’t agree with that, as always it’s a matter of opinion. For me 300- 400 dext makes an incredible difference as you will make monsters enter into recovery every single time in solo, and even in few players games, this is way more important Than having 1,6 life instead of 900, and the gameplay is way smoother, way funnier.
I used to play vitae bowa in my early hc days, dozen years ago, once I tried full dext, there is no turning back. But I must admit I learned to play, I hardly never get hit, I know it because my 20% ice armour from fortitude hardly ever proc, most the pity, I just have a good environment awareness, and I use slow missiles when it’s needed. And the a5 merc with right stuff is an unstoppable killing machine, which move at the speed of an f1. For me it’s such a waste to sink vitality in bowa, such a waste, you lose all the adrenaline of being a glass canon that move fast and destroy fast, at the price of being attentive.

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